Description:
Many of the most significant studies devoted to Ambrogio Spinola have focused on one particular aspect of his life: his successful military career. This volume, through its interdisciplinary and cultural approach, breaks open this all too narrow perspective and expands our understanding of Spinola and his world. As a great military strategist and Catholic knight, entrepreneur in the international finance market, courtier, and diplomat, Spinola was certainly a Genoese, but he was also a member of the transnational Iberian elite, to which he linked his fate and that of his children. His life’s journey between Italy, Flanders, and Spain, and the reinterpretations of his life by his contemporaries in art, literature, and the press, give us the opportunity to reflect on the multiple identities and the physical and mental wanderings of many Europeans of the Early Modern Age. Ambrogio Spinola offers an example of humanity that is impossible to capture in a single reading and is much more contemporary than we can imagine.


INDICE:

Ambrogio Spinola: The Threads of a Multiple Past Silvia Mostaccio, Bernardo J. García García, Luca Lo Basso

Part I. Ambrogio and the Spinola of San Luca: Gender and Family Strategies
Around Ambrogio: The Family Network in Genoa, Milan, and Spain, and Giovanni Botero’s Eulogy Blythe Alice Raviola
Federico and Ambrogio Spinola between Mediterranean Corsairs, War in Flanders, and the Invasion of England Emiliano Beri
‘Ingrandire la famiglia’: Ambrogio Spinola on Honour, War, and Money in his Flanders Correspondence with the Women of his Family Silvia Mostaccio

Part II. Networks: War, Finance, Politics, and Diplomacy
A Joab for King David: Ambrogio Spinola, General of Archduke Albert, and the Davidic Imaginary in the Time of Philip III (1598–1605) 97 Alicia Esteban Estríngana
‘The Great Alcandre’: Ambrogio Spinola at Court Dries Raeymaekers
The Last Venture: Ambrogio Spinola as Governor of Milan (1629–30) Davide Maffi
To Lose One’s Honour: Ambrogio Spinola’s Return to Italy, the Casale Affair, and the End of ‘Pax Hispanica’ (1627–30) Luca Lo Basso

Part III. Memory Construction and Appropriation of Ambrogio Spinola’s Images
Spinola’s Fame in the News Press Nina Lamal, Paul Arblaster
Contesting the Spanish Myth: Republican Shaping of Ambrogio Spinola’s Image in Genoese Literature (1608–52) Enrico Zucchi
Ambrogio Spinola in Genoese Art Laura Stagno
‘Tempore et Loco’: Heroic Rhetoric of Spinola’s Fortune, from Military Entrepreneur to Spanish Grandee Bernardo J. García García
Index